


Made of Dead Things

by AVirtoMusae



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Depression, Long Drabble, Loras POV, M/M, Major character death - Freeform, One-Shot, S05e04 episode tag, Showverse, implied happy endings, mention of an attempted suicide, probably au after that, show-verse, we'll find out after episode six, with an implied happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-16
Updated: 2015-05-16
Packaged: 2018-03-30 18:44:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3947644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AVirtoMusae/pseuds/AVirtoMusae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’s dead inside. It aches in every single bone of his body, makes every breath a sword to his gut. This is not living, he knows. He barely wakes up in the mornings, and half of the time he wishes the Stranger would take pity on him and strike him down in his sleep, in training, in drinking, in anything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Made of Dead Things

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Icon for Hire's Iodine.

 

_“I can't make reality connect_

_I push till I have nothing left_

_But if we want to wake up,_

_Why we still singin' these lullabys?_

_I'll run in circles till I crash_

_One day these steps will be my last_

_But if we want to wake up,_

_Why we still singin' these lullabys?”_

_~~ Icon for Hire, “Iodine”, Scripted_

 

He’s dead inside. It aches in every single bone of his body, makes every breath a sword to his gut. This is not living, he knows. He barely wakes up in the mornings, and half of the time he wishes the Stranger would take pity on him and strike him down in his sleep, in training, in drinking, in anything.

So instead of thinking, instead of feeling, he just exists in a void. The wine tastes like ash on his tongue, and part of him knows he’s poisoning himself and wasting away, but he can’t be bothered to care anymore. He still trains incessantly more for something to occupy himself than truly caring.

At first he lived for vengeance, but that’s empty now. He’s known that since the Battle of Blackwater. He tried so, so hard to get Renly’s armor on. He’d succeeded eventually, but it had been awkward, too loose, and digging into his skin in awkward place. Blood had trickled down his arms, but he could not care.

He could not find it in himself to care. He cannot find it in himself to care.

He had fought, had slain enemies in his path. That was the most alive he had felt. The blood and guts and brains of enemies spraying his clothes and soaking the earth beneath his feet, he had remembered he was alive. The blood had pumped through his veins. That was living.

But what had followed after still follows. It’s nothing. Standing before Joffrey, he couldn’t feel anything. His voice had been dead as he had spoken. Maybe he could live for his family, Margaery, he had thought, if he could not live for revenge.

That too had been in vain for when the sun has set, no candle can replace it. So he keeps on living without life. He’s a shell, a shell of what he once was, and he can’t bring himself to care. He doesn't even eat without his sister practically shoving food down his throat. But even then, fully fed and worshiped by his peers, he cannot find it in himself to give a single damn.

So he drinks, and he finds men to fuck, as if it can do anything to ease his suffering. It doesn’t. All it does it make it so much worse. It makes him remember Renly, and that remembering is another stabbing into his heart. It steals his breath from him, burns his chest, and all it does is make him want to fall out of existence that much quicker.

He tells his sister that he does not care for the world. He tells her that he doesn’t care if people find out about his tendencies. So perhaps it isn’t surprising that Margaery and Olyvar are the ones that find him one night, blood streaming from his wrists onto his bed. The blood is red like his soul, like the stains the shadow left on his love.

Dying feels good he thinks then, but when they find him, they bring him back to life. He curses and shouts at them, raising a fuss that he knows will be overheard by more than could be desired . . . but still there is nothing in him that cares, that clings to life.

It’s only a few days later, when he is dragged away by some new Faith Militant, that he wants to fight. He doesn’t want to die, he realizes, at least not like this. He doesn’t want to die in this prison, behind bars, weak and helpless. If he dies, he wants it to be on his terms, to end his pain, or in his vengeance.

He wants to cry, though he thought he had shed his tears long ago. _Has he cried for Renly?_ he wonders, unable to think of much beyond _Renly, Renly, Renly, Renly, Renly, Renly, Renly, Renly._ It’s like all the breaths of air have left his lungs again, and he feels like he’s falling with nothing to hold on to.

The cell is enough to drive him mad, but he knows that it will be the last home he’ll have in life. Lying back in that prison cell, he decides he wants to live to make Renly proud, to honor his lover’s memory. It’s too late for that, he tries not to remember.

It’s too hard not to remember when he’s kneeling in front of a crowd of thousands, his hands being tied together. They want to drag him through the streets, and he’s powerless to stop it. So is everyone. There’s nothing even his grandmother can do.

As the cobbled, filthy stones rip into his skin with every rough edge and piece of debris, as every commoner throws things at him for loving men, the pain of everything (his heart, his soul, the end of his love) echoes to the gods. There’s nothing left now, no matter how much he wants to live, he knows there’s no chance of surviving. “Renly,” he whispers, shutting his eyes to shut out the pain. He doesn’t want to stay now, so there, humiliated and utterly nothing, he lets himself slip into oblivion.

The next thing he sees is light, blinding. He wonders if this is hell, for the Seven can’t welcome them to their heaven, can they? When he likes men. No, he thinks, he didn’t die for loving men. He died because he was the one, the only one, to ever love Renly. If he’s away from Renly, then surely this is hell.

But thoughts of death are short, for soon, Loras finds that this is not hell, and that this is so much better than life.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Any comments would be lovely! I have two other stories on their way, so please be on the lookout within the next few months! =)
>
>>   
> A Virto Musae  
> By the Virtue of the Muse


End file.
